space_junkfandomcom-20200215-history
Soviet Log 22
Session 2 - Into the Mines We picked things up on our cushey 'yard shift' with the party taking advantage of the relative safety of the Gulag. Eva and Roq upgraded their armor and implants, Mei Lin upgraded her character sheet, and Katya went in search of Sub-Commander (and "Rogue-in-chief") Danika. Katya's goal was to get herself permanently assigned to Yard duty but after speaking with Danica that sounded unlikely since it would require a permanent shift transfer ("never split the party"). Instead, she found out that getting our entire shift promoted was a better approach. Danica hinted that making shift A, in particular the shift foreman, look bad would be mutually beneficial. Katya would spend most of her free time over the next few days doing this with mixed results (one success and one fail costing her $1000 rubles). While Roquette Salvaged Eva took advantage of the windfall block and gathered as much info as she could on the members of A Block with hopes of finding some weak links in their group. Since Kat had reported that Danika wasn't fond of the Block A commander, Larisa, Eva focused her search there. Turns out, Larisa slept with a literally stinky, male guard to get her squad posted to yard duty. If that's all it takes, Roquette should have us on Yard duty in no time. Larisa is scheming, ambitious and cleaver and always has a few deals on the go. She is also known to hang out with Commander Porakov and spends most of her days working in the women's command center. Katya also located the black market. It's useful for a variety of things (no pistol joy, though) like salvage. Of the most interest were small vials of dust that were being traded. Katya purchased one and brought it back for Mei Lin to evaluate. She recognized it as Elder Bone Dust with magical properties to improve Magic Weapon and Runic Infusion rituals. We would find out later that the bone dust was a lucrative side-mining business that might even be the main reason for the choice of Gulag location in the first place. By doing a little science we also learned that the quarry where the mine is located has been there since the stone age. At the end of our yard shift, Shift B returned from logging with casualties. There had been a fatal accident and they were non-too-happy about it. Our own shift thought we were godly for having the foresight to avoid it. Based on the grumblings from shift B, it sounded unfortunately like we were no longer able to trade bread crusts for shift upgrades anymore since nobody wanted to work dangerous shift-duty. The next day we went back to logging (no accidents) and then found out that, as predicted, we were reassigned to the mines on the following day. The mines actually are not any worse than logging (assuming you don't have an irrational fear of enclosed places. *cough* Eva *cough*). Sure, it's dangerous but not really any more so than chopping trees on the side of a mountain. It was actually even kind of warm which was a welcome relief. Eva made armor for everyone this day - woohoo! We also expanded Eva's 'gruel for the downtrodden' program since nobody was eating anything any more (Sustain FTW). During our first day in the mine we had to send a few people out on dangerous solo missions. They were fortunate not to have to use the helmets that Eva constructed as part of her 'safety equipment for the downtoden' program. We did some science on the rocks to determine if they were in fact iron ore and IIRC we detrermined that the stone could be smelted to refine a variety of low grade minerals. Once we were in the mine we made two discoveries. First, the Bone Dust is being actively mined but it's done surreptitiously under covered wagons and not by the main shift workers. We followed the wagons back into the mine to see them digging and loading while the rest of the shift worked elsewhere. Second, there were crazy humanoid lizardmen wandering around the mine! Katya spent a block tracking lizard footprints deeper into the subterranean tunnels until it got too dangerous to proceed. While down there she found more scroll fragments which continued the story of an Asian team that explored the mine years earlier (it was written in 'Asian' so Mei Lin did the translation). For reasons that escape this logger (although I remember being all for it) we decided to investigate the mine for lizard men. Eva was scared of the dark(er) caves and refused to go in on the first day. Only after Eva stood on a bucket and yelled at the party of martial artists that she was 'not going into the godamned reptaloid cave unarmed' did they grudingly agree to postpone the suicide mission until the next day. The next day came and we descended, as a party this time, along the path Katya had mapped out earlier. We pressed on where she had turned back and soon encountered a chamber with two actual live lizardmen! None of us spoke Cthulu-ese (or really even tried to parley - truth be told) so we jumped into combat right away. Everyone was feeling pretty cocky with our rudimentary weapons and armor. Except for Eva who cowered at the back muttering about getting her defeses up before the walls closed in, with a haunted look in her eye. We shall see if our confidence is well-founded when we continue the battle next time. Side note: Mei Lin's Sustain blew the lid off the bread-crust economy Second side note: Katya's first strike of the chapter was a surprise sucker punch from behind. Rogues are so broken! Rewards 11 Generic Points 1 Benny for Katya 4 Academic Points for Eva